Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Smashwords Partners with ScrollMotion to Deliver Indie Ebooks to Major Mobile App Marketplaces

Smashwords books are coming to an app store near you.

Today we announced an agreement with ScrollMotion that will transform over 33,000 Smashwords Premium Catalog ebooks into individual mobile apps for distribution to the largest app marketplaces for smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices.

The relationship will gain Smashwords authors and publishers free entry into the app marketplaces for Apple, Android, Windows Phone 7 and WebOS.

Our partnership with ScrollMotion expands the distribution of our books to the largest, fastest growing app marketplaces, and will enable Smashwords authors and publishers to reach new readers.

According to Gartner Group, worldwide smartphone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 57.7 percent increase from 2010. Apple, Android and Windows Phone 7 above power 63 percent of all smart phones in 2011, and this will rise to 85 percent by 2015. Separately, in the all-important tablet market, which Gartner estimates will reach 69 million devices this year, Gartner predicts Apple, Android, WebOS will collectively power over 92 percent of tablets sold. Gartner estimates sales of tablets will grow to 294 million units by 2015, of which Apple, Android and WebOS are expected to command a collective 89 percent market share.

Over 47,000 books are published at Smashwords today, with over 5,000 new releases in the last 30 days. Over 34,000 of these titles have been accepted into the Smashwords Premium Catalog for distribution to major retailers.

Shipments to ScrollMotion will commence on Friday, and titles will begin appearing in the app marketplaces later this month. All Premium Catalog books are automatically opted in for ScrollMotion distribution. To modify distribution preferences, log in to your Smashwords Dashboard's Channel Manager. Like all Smashwords retail relationships, authors and publishers will earn 60 percent of the list price.

I think e-book apps are a great idea. It's like selling paperbacks at a grocery store: people who would never think of entering a bookstore will stumble across the books while searching for something else.

(For those who are interested, the key to finding ScrollMotion e-books at the Apple app store seems to be to do a search on the word Iceberg.)

Excellent! This is an area where it would be very difficult (and prohibitively expensive) for authors to expand on their own. It really opens up a whole new avenue. I look forward to seeing the results!

Thanks for the up-date, Mark. You are doing an excellent job. I've got three more titles I'm going to be putting up on Smashwords shortly. Just a mnatter of getting them formatted. Keep up the good work.

That's Great!!, I have been telling a number of people about Smashwords, I had a question will this help those on Kindles? It seems from the distribution page that books still haven't shipped to Amazon. Is it true that if they just came to Smashwords they could buy books for their Kindles? Thanks, I think you're doing a great job of getting us out there. Thanks You

Thanks for the enthusiastic feedback, everyone! I probably should have put in the post that we have no idea how big (or small) of a retail channel this will ultimately become. I scoured the Internet for hard numbers on the percentage of ebook sales derived by standalone book apps and no one seems to track it (maybe we'll be the first!).

Paul, yes, although we're not officially distributing to the Amazon Kindle store yet, we do support Kindle users who want to purchase directly through Smashwords.com. They download the MOBI format.

Wonderful! But could you point us to a sample app (of a free book?) once one is ready, so we can get a further sense of what we're getting? And will we be getting notifications of when our book aps are available?

YESSSS!! Thank you Mark and all the Smashwords employees working so hard on all these things so we authors don't have to (Not that I would even know how to begin with something like this, eh?). This is why we love SW and Mark Coker (Well, besides the "little" fact that we are able to publish our otherwise forgotten books to the web).

This is such amazing news, Mark, and the best part? You GIVE it to us FREE FREE FREE. Thank you so much for working so hard to make all of OUR books a publishing success. You have to be the best distributor out there!

p.s. to Paul re the question of getting Kindle books from Smashwords: SUPER EASY!! When you set up your Kindle device, you get an email address. Once you buy a book from Smashwords, you just email the MOBI file to that free Kindle address and your book is fully-loaded on your Kindle device the next time you turn it on. Like magic :)

This whole ebook revolution has been so exciting to me. I keep wondering what's coming next? I hope I can become acquainted with some of my fellow Smashwords travelers.www.GuardinosWrite.com/conartist.html

What a delightful surprise Mark. I am so impressed with all that you and your partners are doing that I really do not know how to express what I feel. I believe in this win/win revolution and so proud to be apart. God bless you and all the writers on Smashwords.

GREAT results from your efforts Mark.Well deserved Imho.RE:DOWNLOAD stats---they are for Total d/l---right? Any chance we could see the total /month stats ranking. Some shown with high d/l figures here have been available for YEARS!Thanks in advance.